Tom was babysitting.
The evil dark lord, who had begun his reign of terror over Hogwarts, formed himself a gang of followers, opened the chamber of secrets and trained the Basilisk inside for a round of catch and kill the Mudblood last year, was babysitting a four-year-old dirt-veined Muggle because Mrs. Cole thought it would be a 'nice learning experience' for him of 'responsibility'.
But Tom was responsible. He was responsible for Denis and Amy's silence. He was responsible for the nasty incidents that kept happening to the Mudbloods of Hogwarts. He was responsible for killing Mudblooded Myrtle and making a Horcrux out of her. He was responsible for killing his father, accusing his uncle of the murder and obtaining the ring he was fingering at the moment.
Perhaps Mrs. Cole thought that Riddle's apology to Amy and Denis and his polite hellos in the morning were because of Hogwarts and Dumbeldedum, as she called him. Maybe she thought he was changing for the better and it was time to try him around children.
Tom hated children. He hated children since he was a child. He hated children since John had hit him deliberately with a football. He hated children since Rufus took his lunch. He hated children since they were playing Hide-and-Seek and when it was Tom's turn to seek they all abandoned him.
This evening wasn't going to go well.
"Pway, Tom" Jill said, reaching for Tom's sleeve and tugging at it.
"No, Jill." Tom replied coolly.
The girl threw her doll at him and said. "You meanie, Tom."
Tom sighed in a groan like manner and his hand twitched towards his wand. One round of Crucio would do her well.
"What witing, Tom?" she asked, trying to peer over the older boy's shoulder.
Must she call him that? He hates the name. He snapped the diary shut midway in writing a curse and replied. "Nothing you'll be able to understand."
She poked him. "I CAN WEAD!" she yelled and then she poked him again.
Tom grabbed her hand and yanked her to him. "Don't do that!" he hissed.
But he yanked too hard apparently, she began crying.
Tom signed and let go of her hand. She fell to the ground, crying. He turned his back to her and thanked silently that there wasn't anyone in the orphanage that might care.
In a few minutes her cries turned to sobs and then to sniffs when she realized nobody really cared.
"What want, Tom?" the girl asked him in a hoarse voice. "What want you when a baby?"
He turned around to look at the child who asked him such an odd question. "What do you mean?"
The girl still had problems with speaking and proper grammar, so she told him the sentence half in signs and half in words "You want, Tom." She pointed at him and then to her heart, well her chest, her heart was on the other side. "…thing" she pointed she threw her arms trying to signal him a big circle. "When you a baby." She said, bringing one arm down with her hand to her shoulder and motioning it as if it was something behind her, then her eye lit up as she remembered the word. "Since you a baby."
She was going to say something again but she stopped. Her face was drawn into a thoughtful look. Even though she didn't say, Tom knew that she was arguing with herself whether she should say or not.
"Continue," Tom spared her little mind the trouble.
Her eyes looked at him wistfully. "Thing bad."
Her grammar mistakes and pronunciation problems didn't hide anything from Tom. His mind had already summed it up into a sentence that couldn't be ringing more clearly in Tom's ears.
You had wanted something, Tom, since you were a baby, you wanted it but you still don't have it .. It's something bad and big. What is it, Tom? Why do you want it?
"Power." He answered.
Jill looked up at Tom.
"Like a teacher, see. It's like somebody who can tell you what to do." He explained. "Like a king."
She pouted and her eyebrows drew into each other in confusion. "Since you a baby?"
"I was never truly a baby, Jill."
I wasn't never stupid enough or that needy.
"What power want you, Tom?"
What sort of power do you want Tom?
"Very strong power, Jill." He told her. "When I was a baby I wanted all the caretakers to dote on me, I wanted them to leave other behind and make me first because I deserve best."
A silence fell between them and then he continued. "And when I was four I used to enjoy watching the sky, so I wanted the sky. I wanted to be able to reach out and hold the stars in my hand. I wanted to be able to shatter the moon. I wanted to command the sun to rise out of the west."
Silence again.
"And when I was seven I wanted to make babies to stop crying. I wanted people to be completely silent when I entered the room. I wanted people who I didn't like, people who picked on me, to be silenced forever because of their words. It did happen, you know. And you know what else? I realized I was very special."
"And I began stealing things, see. I stole Lisa's yoyo and John's watch. I liked causing the trouble people felt when they lost their things. I liked having their things in my hands. I liked to play with people, and I still do. I like the power."
"And when Dumbledore came and I went to school, it was the best experience I ever had. I met people like me, see. People who were special and they knew it. People that didn't pick on me."
His voice grew softer for a moment when he said. "People like me very much there, see. The student and the professors all like me. People don't call me a freak there."
His voice grew hard again as he said. "But there were people," he spat in a way that would make you thing that those people weren't deserving of the title. "Who were atrocious mistakes and not special at all. They were pranksters and idiots who believed in ridiculous ideas of the elite and the commoners being thrown into the same category, same station and that they should be given equal credit and rights. Of course, most of them were commoners of dirty vein and some of them were the shame and the blemish upon their purer blood which was stained by their minds. It was hard, you know, watching them opening their foul mouths and speaking with crude words larger for their small voices and listening to their uncared for opinion."
"I tried to stop all that nonsense, if I were not to, who would? People are cowards, but somebody had to fight wrongness, right? These people were getting bolder every day. They broke every social taboo, the purer ones befriended the dirt veined and mated with them. It had to stop, and I believed I could've stopped it," Tom said, almost wistfully. "But I couldn't. Something went wrong and I had to stop or I'd fall into the pit, so I stopped. "
He then looked straight at her with his eyes full of daggers and dark and death. "I stopped for the moment. Only for the moment. But believe you me, Jill. I won't rest until every filthy dirt-veined Muggle and Mudblood bows to me and is treated like it deserves."
When Mrs. Cole returned from her trip, she found Jill sleeping in her crib and Tom reading a book sitting by her. When she inquired Tom about the book he said it was one of the fairytale books she used to read to him, and he felt he wanted to relive the memory.
Taken by his nice comment, charm and that he managed to get Jill in bed before midnight, Mrs. Cole gave him a pat for a job well done, made him eat supper and sent him to bed with a nice steaming mug of hot chocolate.
In the morning at breakfast, one of the caretakers came running to the old Matron, saying that she found Jill cold in bed. Mrs. Cole caught Tom's eye across the dining table.
He winked at her.
A/N: I hate children, need I say more?
I'm rather shy of posting this because I feel that it's incomplete. Something's missing, see. But after months of waiting to find what that something is, I posted this bloody thing and rid myself of it. If you find what's missing, do tell me.